


The Price of Magic

by asktheravens



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, chained!Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:30:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asktheravens/pseuds/asktheravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have done my duty to the fandom by producing my own chained!Loki story.  Please enjoy it before the new movie proves how inaccurate this is.</p><p>Thor gets Loki his parole from Asgard along with the responsibility to decide when and how to use him.</p><p> </p><p>“Thor,” Loki sighed.  “How many corpses does it take to tell you that I was never what you thought I was?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamingMoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingMoonlight/gifts), [amberfox17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberfox17/gifts).



> My thanks to Amberfox17 and Lokizillas, both of Tumblr, for the conversation which inspired this little story.
> 
> My apologies to Peter S. Beagle for borrowing a couple of my favorite lines from The Last Unicorn.

Thor had learned not to muscle his way through Loki’s storms. He rode the cyclonic wind, spiraling closer to the center rather than plowing straight through to it, but he still felt hundreds of stinging cuts as the razored gusts buffeted him. The whirlwind was beautiful from afar, a glittering, sinuous column of ice shards and, as it moved, minced organic debris that had once been a regiment of troll infantry. It had served its purpose; the enemies’ morale had dissolved and they were routed. It was time to bring Loki back to heel.

Loki cackled madly at the center of the whirlwind, his magic flowing deep green like currents in a frozen river from his feet out to the tips of his fingers, where it broke off to fuel the destruction with a sound like ice cracking underfoot. His skin had gone a glacial blue and the intricate lines and whorls of his Jotun markings stood out stark, glowing white against it. His eyes were mostly closed, his head thrown back in ecstatic abandon, and red light leaked from beneath his lids. Thor’s breath caught at the sight, as it always did, and he allowed himself a few heartbeats to appreciate the terrible perfection of Loki in his element. Mjolnir’s weight tore him free of the battering winds and he faced Loki with the shackles in his hands.

“Come, brother, that’s enough. Time we went home.” Thor always tried reason first. Always. But Loki turned his mad red eyes upon him and Thor faced a dozen images of him, all snarling and mocking. They hurled wicked blades of ice at Thor, at his eyes and throat and the weak joints in his armor, and Thor dodged as many as he could. This was no new trick; Thor turned so only his side showed as a target and swirled his tattered cape around him to spoil Loki’s aim. Most of the blades were illusory and passed by or through him with a whiff of cold air. Others missed and joined the maelstrom all around them. One buried itself a palm’s width deep in the meat of his bicep with a wintery sting and numbness spread from the bloodless wound.

The chains in Thor’s hand seemed to pull him forward and he launched himself at the real Loki with a frustrated growl. His free hand curled around his brother’s exposed throat and immediately his frozen skin began to burn Thor’s fingers like a brand, but Thor didn’t let go. Loki laughed on, though it sounded rather strangled.

“Enough,” Thor told him again. Loki wrapped long fingers around his forearms and frost traced up his vambraces. He could feel the cold leaching the strength from his muscles even through the layers of metal and leather and padding in his armor. Loki’s other hand covered Thor’s wrist and for a moment, as their skin came together, he could feel his brother’s storm calling to him. Lightning came to his eyes, for he could see its light flickering over Loki’s lunatic grin, and he knew his brother was showing him this on purpose. Together they could create a storm that would spread to engulf both armies, then all the Realms, so cold that it would shatter the gates of Asgard and incinerate Midgard in a rain of white fire, with winds fit to strip the bark from Yggdrasil with their fury. His heart would freeze in his chest and Loki would burn up as the thunder shook and toppled everything, but they would be together, and for a moment it tempted Thor, as it always did. Then he squeezed a little harder and Loki subsided, though of course he didn’t look chastened at all. Thor raised the chains and the shackles darted hungrily for Loki. As they clicked into place at his neck and wrists, their father’s Aesir illusion spread over his feral blue features until only the deep red of his eyes remained grinning at Thor. The red condensed inward and darkened, forming the pupils of the familiar green eyes. The cold stopped burning him and the cyclone died off, ice shards tinkling down around them, though the innocuous chiming music they made was punctuated with thuds and splats as chunks of frozen troll also fell around them in a grisly rain.

Loki, his Loki, smiled lazily at him, his eyes fluttering closed. Standing there spent and satisfied, with his rumpled clothes and wind-tossed hair, he might have been in bed with Thor instead of battle. Loki slumped, trusting, into Thor’s waiting arms and curled against him. Thor held him against his chest, feeling the chill of the chains through his armor, and turned to trudge back to camp on foot. He didn’t speak, but he bent his neck to bury his nose in Loki’s hair and breathed in the scent of winter wind.

 

“Thor, this is folly. He must return to his cell!” Sif looked exasperated, and he was sure she was, for they’d had this conversation before.

“No. He is a useful tool in this war, and he stays.” I promised him, he thinks but does not say. I promised him he could stay with me. He was dying in that cage.

“It’s not worth the price. What happens when you can’t control him any more? Will you kill him finally? What if you had fallen in battle, or he had killed you?”

“It won’t happen.”

“Will you lie to me now? Tell me he didn’t do that to you? He’s dangerous, Thor, he’s not the boy we knew growing up. He’s a rabid dog on a fraying leash and every time you let him off it I fear it’s the last time.”

“Enough!” Thor’s fist cracked the table and the discussion ended. “He is my responsibility. His magic is chaotic, and you may doubt his motives, but releasing him today saved lives on both sides. Loki is a weapon to rival Mjolnir and I will choose when to employ him.” 

Thor left her and returned to his tent. Sif was no longer able to hold her tongue, but he knew she was far from alone in her opinion of Loki. A rabid dog, she’d called him, one that needed to be put down before it bit the wrong hand. He wanted to slam the door but he didn’t have one, just a flap of leather. He flung himself into the only substantial piece of furniture, a heavy padded chair. Loki slept curled on his bed, his chained hands clasped before him, and Thor tried to keep quiet almost in spite of himself. He felt agitated, spoiling for a fight, in contrast with his brother’s moment of peace. Each time he let Loki off the leash, the expenditure left the trickster sated for a time, more biddable, and more the brother Thor remembered. He would never tell the others, for at times he wondered himself how much selfishness drove his actions.

He took out parchment and ink; he still had work to do. His father would need an accounting of the battle, and there were dispatches to send out, allies to coordinate, wounded and supplies to count and transport. Thor despised paperwork. Such drudgery had never featured in the stories that had moved him as a boy. His pen scratched resentment into the scraped and stretched hide, and if his hand was so heavy it nearly ripped on the downstrokes, well, no one was there to see.

“You smell like blood,” Loki purred into his ear. He had, it seemed, relearned his silent tread, even with the chains as a handicap. “You haven’t even bathed?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I’m sure. I’m surprised Lady Sif didn’t at least…disarm you, before she sent you home.”

“The Lady Sif and I are not currently on good terms. She certainly isn’t seeing to my armaments.” Thor’s voice sounded tired, even to him, but he still smiled a little. Loki had always loved to cause rifts between Thor and his lovers, and he knew Loki enjoyed watching him argue with everyone about keeping him.

“Let me, then. I’m sure I remember how.” Thor knew he shouldn’t, but he still let Loki slide his long fingers under his surcoat. His brother had learned the best way to remove Thor’s armor when they were little more than children and though the chains hampered him somewhat he could still find each buckle and strap with great efficiency. Soon he sat stripped to the waist, wincing as the last layer of shirt peeled away from the wound in his arm. The edges were clean and tinged with blue and a patch of bloodless white numbness surrounded it. The flesh was cool to the touch from his shoulder to the crook of his elbow and the chill was spreading along with a bone-deep ache. Loki dropped into his lap and Thor’s body accommodated him without a thought.

“It pains you,” Loki said. He prodded the wound with a sure and gentle touch.

“It’s not so bad,” Thor said, slipping into their ages old pattern: one wounds, the other makes light.

“It won’t heal on its own, not well. Not for a long time.” Loki stroked his bare chest like he was soothing a frightened horse, long slow circular motions with the slightest pressure, and Thor leaned his head back and let his eyes drop shut for a moment. “But I could help it along, if you undid one of these.” Thor didn’t have to open his eyes to see the hint of a sly grin on his brother’s face. It felt so familiar, Loki working him loose with his clever hands and silver tongue, and before he knew it Thor had freed Loki’s left wrist. He could, in theory, free both his hands, for as long as the collar stayed on Loki could not work any true malice, but he was tired and vulnerable without his armor. Loki sprang up and used the chance to remove his own clothes, tattered from the ice storm, before squirming back into position in just his leather breeches, heedless as ever of the cold. He massaged Thor’s injured arm until the gash wept cold tears and feeling returned like needles in his veins. When he was satisfied, Loki stitched the wound with a fine filament of pure, leaf green seidr, binding it shut with invisible sutures of magic. 

“Now to pay the price,” Loki told him as he bit off the string. He finished the spell by brushing his lips over the wound in a soft kiss.

“What price?”

“Magic always has a price, Thor. Didn’t you pay attention to anything I’ve ever told you?” He leaned back, grinning. “Fortunately for you, that was a small spell, with only a small payment required. All you need to do is answer one question honestly, and I will put my fetters back on myself, meek as a kitten. Come now, brother, that’s not so much, is it?”

“What’s the question?” Thor wanted to argue, but he didn’t. It didn’t seem fair that he had to pay Loki to fix something Loki had himself done, but fairness and Loki were ill-acquainted.

“What did you promise the Allfather in exchange for this charming parole?”

“He got me with a trick similar to the one you just pulled. I paid for the magic in your chains, and I made certain promises to our father. Beyond that I won’t discuss it.”

“Come now, Thor, no offering up someone else’s liver.” Loki leaned in so close Thor could feel his breath on his ear. “What promise did you make?” he whispered.

“I promised to kill you.”

“What, if I disobeyed?” Thor looked away. “Just to murder me in general when I wasn’t useful anymore? I’d be upset if I believed it. You’d never kill me like this.” Loki punctuated this by snapping his shackle back around his wrist.

“I’ll never kill you at all,” Thor blurted out. “You wanted to know the truth, there it is. I got your parole by going to our father and lying my ass off.” Thor felt a weight lift from him with the words, though he couldn’t say if it was from admitting that or discharging the debt he owed.

“You bought me with your own honor?” Loki’s laughter mocked him. “Who would have thought a monstrous and ill-begotten changeling runt like myself could still command a price so high as a lie from an honest man. Are you sure I was worth it?”

“Loki…”

“But of course it was worth it. Even finding the materials for my chains. What are they made of?”

“The heart of a meteor that killed a world. A length of our mother’s hair. And a substantial quantity of my own blood. Maybe some other things; I didn’t see everything Father put in.”

“Impressive. And yet you still lack the wit to realize that you shouldn’t tell me how I am prisoned. Still, what’s that to you? You have me where you want me at last, don’t you? For I owe you a debt I’ve no coin to pay.” Loki sank to the floor between Thor’s legs and raised his shackled hands to undo his breeches. Thor stopped him, grabbing the chains and hauling him up by the collar. Loki’s resentment burned like a frozen sea, forming frost on the chains as they struggled to suppress his magic and leaving the metal cold enough to bite Thor’s fingers.

“Should I have left you there, then?” Thor growled. He could feel his own temper starting to slip free, and yet he knew it was a terrible idea for them to come together in anger.

“You would if you were wise. You keep your own death on a dog leash in exchange for my subservience.”

“Curse you, brother, you think this is what I wanted?” Thor shook the chains, and Loki, unable to contain his frustrations, then dropped him roughly to the floor.

“What did you want, my love?” Loki changed demeanor again, looking up at Thor with the sly, seductive smile his brother would do anything to see, but his mask slipped when Thor met his eyes, his grief and turmoil writ all over his face.

“I wanted you back, of course. Like it was.”

“Thor,” Loki sighed. “How many corpses does it take to tell you that I was never what you thought I was?” He rose and straddled Thor’s waist, running his hands over Thor’s bare chest. “You cannot have what you want. Why not take what you can have?” Loki looped his bound hands over Thor’s head and pulled the chain tight against his neck. He might have strangled Thor with them, if their magic would have allowed it, but he dragged him into a rough kiss instead and ground his hips against Thor’s belly. Thor knew that all of it, from the warmth of Loki’s skin to the green in his eyes, was a lie, an illusion, and as his body responded he could no longer see the line between loving his brother and hating him.

He returned Loki’s kiss and rose from the chair, Loki’s chains wrapped around his neck and his long legs tight around his waist. The weight did not bow him and he strode across the room and threw Loki down on the narrow bed with his weight pinning him. Loki ground against him and kissed down his neck, biting at the hollow of his throat, enjoying the heat and power of his brother as Thor grappled with their pants.

Thor finally freed his legs and thrust into him, burning and unlubricated, and Loki gasped. He tightened the chain around Thor’s neck as he rode him hard, enjoying the pain. He danced on the edge of total blackout, his shackles threatening him with each degree he tightened his chokehold. His magic sang in his blood and an arctic wind whipped through the tent. Thor grimaced as the chain froze, and the only sweeter sound than his pain was the tiny, musical sound of bespelled metal starting to crack.

“I’ll kill you if you set me free,” he hissed his warning into Thor’s ear. “Set me free.”

Thor knew it was both true and not true, a promise and a lie. He drove into his brother, his worst enemy and dearest love, and reached for the lock.


End file.
